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Choke Collar: Positron, Episode Two

Choke Collar: Positron, Episode TwoAs in her novels The Handmaid's Tale and The Year of the Flood, Atwood constructs the dystopia of her Choke Collar: Positron,...Choke Collar: Positron, Episode TwoSci-fi and Fantasy, FictionMargaret AtwoodAs in her novels The Handmaid's Tale and The Year of the Flood, Atwood constructs the dystopia of her Choke Collar: Positron,...2012-12-14Byliner Inc

As in her novels The Handmaid’s Tale and The Year of the Flood, Atwood constructs the dystopia of her Choke Collar: Positron, Episode Two serial out of the darker currents at work in contemporary society. At some point in the middle distance of America’s future, unemployment reaches such an untenable peak that society is forced to restructure. Stan and Charmaine live in Consilience, an experimental town in which volunteers spend half their time as middle-class suburbanites and half as orange-jumpsuited prisoners of a jail called Positron. When Charmaine has an affair with one of the ”Alternates” who time-share both lives, the couple are forced to consider the possibility that (surprise!) Consilience may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Atwood’s brisk tone is more in keeping with the town’s pastel-perfect facade than its nougaty center of evil, and some of the logistics don’t quite add up. Still, she seems to be enjoying the serial format immensely, and both installments of Positron are breezy reads. B